On the outskirts of town, the setting sun sent a long orange reflection across the dirt road, unbroken by tree or shrub, which burned Kask's webbed feet with each step he took.
Their squad slithered through the briarwood, tracking the ThunderCats and the herd of tiny plant-people the cats had befriended. The air trapped inside the briar's dome got stuck in Kask's sinuses, stuffy and dry, and the whitened thorns of the overgrown weeds nipped at his ankles, as sharp as fangs.
Then came the pollen, thrown by the flower-creatures in glittering golden comets. It stung his eyes, and then invaded his scales and stung there, too. He lost sight of the men in his squad as he staggered around in agony, but he could still hear the fighting.
From the sounds, he realized that the wrong side was winning.
And through his stumbling feet, that the ground, the air, and the thorns were all growing extremely hot.
"Kask, I swear, I'm going to shoot you just to get you to stop twitching." Kask's partner made the sniff-hiss that signaled annoyance. "I don't know why I always get stuck with you. You make my scales itch."
Kask curled his toes. Crispy, coated in dust. "I can't help it, Steggs. There's something wrong tonight. I can feel it."
The briarwood burst into flames. A circle of death, trapping the lizards with their ancient enemy. Incapacitated, choking on the smoke.
The cats attacked.
"Sure. You're the survivor, right? Gotta give you prophetic powers or something, right?" Steggs sniff-hissed again. "You said there was something wrong last week, too. And the week before that. And the one before."
That's because there was something wrong. There was always something wrong. Like that uppity heifer in the bakery claiming she'd no egg sandwiches to sell. Or that black monster threatening to smash their skulls with his big iron hammer if they strayed off the main street again. Or that cat, that arrogant white tiger, that the bull-men wouldn't let them kill in spite of clearly being provoked. But this particular evening . . .
"I smell cat," he said. Spicier than the bovines, predatory like lizards, faint but apparent on the hot, still air. More cats. Lots of cats. Just like in the briar. He shuddered.
"Stop twitching!" Steggs brought his patched-together rifle up, pointing it at Kask's temple. He pinched his lipless mouth closed, tightening his finger on the trigger. Apparently, he wasn't kidding this time. "You smell the overgrown cub. The pet, or whatever it is. You know that. Let's just get this over with."
Kask side-eyed the rifle and chose not to reply. They weren't military anymore, he and Steggs and a few others. They'd come home, lugging what technology they'd managed to steal from the edges of battlefields in the middle of the night, deserters all, though there weren't many of them. Mumm-Ra's hold on the the lizards was too strong, but the women and the hatchlings were counting on the disgraced few to bring back the supplies they couldn't make for themselves out in the swamps.
Steggs hadn't been in the thick of the fighting. He'd seen an opportunity, and he'd taken it. He didn't care a whit about deserting the way Kask did.
And those who hadn't deserted? Dying by the dozen, or so they'd heard. Like Khamai and Sauro and the rest of Kask's squad. By going up against the same handful of ThunderCats again and again.
Crickets chirped in the silence between the two lizards. Gnats whizzed through the cooling air in gauzy clouds, getting up their nostrils, in their eyes. Kask tried not to twitch as they walked. His empty pack kept slipping off his shoulder. He hated the prairie. Especially in the summer. It reminded him too much of that night.
The night he'd lost his claw-mates. The night General Slithe had betrayed them, his so-called prized specialized unit. Khamai, the brilliant chameleon who had tracked the ThunderCats to the briarwood. Sauro, loyal to a fault, built like a sycorax, an unstoppable force in battle. And Kask, a rare amphibious lizard, who could break down an enemy's defense from the water while they were focused on Sauro and Khamai. Three supersoldiers at Mumm-Ra's beck and call, the best scouts of the lizard army – but Slithe had betrayed them. Whether under Mumm-Ra's orders or not, Kask didn't want to know. The fact remained that the lizards – his kinsmen! – had wielded the flamethrowers that had burned down the briar in an effort to eliminate the ThunderCats. The uncontrolled flames had taken his comrades. Kask, on Khamai's orders, had taken to the river and swum to safety.
Rather than returning to his commanding officer, he had kept swimming, all the way back home to the swamps.
He would never stop hearing the screams of his comrades as they burned to death, sacrificing themselves for a cause that he no longer believed in. He would never stop expecting to see the raging flames coming for him, where no river promised safe haven.
"Stop twitching!" Steggs yelled.
They'd reached the main street. Steggs made a motion as though he intended to slap Kask with the rifle before shooting him, but a roughly lizard-sized shadow detached itself from the twilight and swallowed him.
Kask froze, staring at the spot where Steggs had just been standing. Then his training kicked in. With a vicious hiss, he whipped around, claws reaching for an attacker, tail curling to deliver a deathblow.
The cheetah dodged his grasp so fast he didn't see it happen. His claws closed on hot air. His tail thumped onto the ground. The ThunderCat stood taller than he did, all straight-legged and hairy. Her narrow, tilted eyes did not improve her pale face.
Worse, he recognized her. She was the one who had knocked him unconscious, leaving his body where the licking flames could reach it, whether she'd intended it or not.
She propped her fist on her hip. She smiled. "Hi," she said.
Kask had time for a disappointed thought: See, Steggs? I was right.
Then an orange, black-striped arm swung out of nowhere. It looped around his throat and tightened, its rock-hard muscles bulging under his jaw. He gagged, trying not to bite through his own tongue. His captor lifted him clear off his webbed feet, standing in a way that incapacitated his tail. The cheetah wisely stayed out of reach of his toe-claws.
The second ThunderCat pushed his weird furred face into Kask's line of sight. He grinned. Kask's gut sank. This was the cat who had responded to Sauro's strength with strength, and won.
Maybe Kask was prophetic, after all.
"You've got some explaining to do, lizard," the orange tiger said.
..::~*~::..
Felline watched from the velvet rope as Ben-Gali removed the individually-wrapped oatbuns from the bag and left them on the filthy desk in the office of The Iron Oxen. The sounds of roaring fire, hissing water, and banging hammer from one of the more distant stalls continued without cessation.
"I thought you had to work," she said.
"Thickhide'll live," he replied, but then he let out a rather rueful chuckle as he deposited the last oatbun on the pile. "I might not, though. Let's get out of here before he catches wind of us."
He led the way around the back of the shop and onto a well-worn trail through waist-high grass. With only one moon in the sky – the smallest, pearl-like Panthera – the night darkened quickly around them, drawing close like a cloak. Felline tripped.
"Here." Ben-Gali transferred the bag to his right hand and held out his left to her.
After a slight hesitation, Felline took his hand. It didn't feel natural at all. She could tell he didn't think so, either, but all he said was, "It's not much farther."
Clusters of fireflies burst from the grass as the two cats passed through, winking blue, green, and yellow. It was a beautiful night, the kind that used to call her to her window to moongaze back in Foret, warm and still and full of the smell of flowers, and soil, and . . . a river?
She swiveled her ears. Yes, or maybe a creek, burbling not far in the distance. Heavy shoes scraping through gravel, Ben-Gali angled away from the water. He led her to a copse, black in the moonlight. He dropped her hand and shuffled around in the dark for a moment, mystifying Felline until he clamped the bag between his teeth, reached up with lean arms, and began to climb the tallest tree. He'd taken off his shoes.
He turned to help her, but she was already there. They shared a grin.
"Hungry?"
"Yes, please."
Ben-Gali fished around in the crackling bag and then passed over two sandwiches. He settled back against the tree trunk, one leg propped on the branch and the other dangling, and took a surprisingly dainty bite of a third sandwich.
Felline stuffed half of one of hers in her mouth.
He snorted into his eggs. "Good?"
"D'lishish," she said, happily chewing. She swallowed. "Brightheart makes these for you?"
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Me . . . and the lizards."
She took another bite, halving the half. "And the lizards come here – ?"
He looked at her quickly, as if that wasn't the topic he'd expected her to start with, and then relaxed into a smile tinged with belligerence. The same one he'd worn when they'd met that afternoon. "Yeah, they come here. Once a week. They barter for food and other supplies and then they leave. Why? Going to tell your king so you can kill them, too?"
Interesting, she thought. Ben-Gali definitely wasn't like any other cat she knew, although that healthy dose of tiger pride couldn't be mistaken for anything else. "I'll probably mention it, yeah. But Lion-O doesn't want to kill lizards." Didn't. With her second sandwich, she tried to smother the twinge of doubt that cropped up when she realized that Lion-O hadn't said anything about lizards in a while. After clashing with Pumyra during the bloody battle to control Avista City, Felline wasn't sure what Lion-O thought of the lizards anymore. "He wants to stop Mumm-Ra. If these lizards come here to barter, chances are good they aren't part of Mumm-Ra's army. We have no quarrel with them. Not anymore."
"Huh," Ben-Gali said. A noncommittal grunt. The Leo moon bloomed over the horizon, as deliberately and stately as a flower unfolding its petals, its purple and blue stripes swirling around the pair of ever-present, eye-shaped storms. Ben-Gali pulled a twig off the tree and chucked it at the ground. "I thought ThunderCats hated lizards. Their 'ancient enemy' or whatever."
"Lion-O's different," she told him. She pulled her knees in and spoke into them. "A lot has happened."
"I suppose getting exiled from your home has something to do with that," he said bitterly. He turned his gaze outward, toward the quiet burbling of the creek, his profile carved from ice in the brightening moonlight.
"Maybe." She liked the way he could look at something so intently, without moving a muscle except to breathe, slow and even. He strongly reminded her of Tygra in that moment, because Lion-O, his brain clicking through a thousand thoughts a minute, could never sit still. "Is that how you feel? Why you say you aren't a ThunderCat? Because you and your mother were exiled from your home, too?"
He laughed and sat forward. "You ask some personal questions, you know that?"
"I only ask what I want to be told," she said. "It's easier to talk to you than I expected."
"Lucky me!" he said, and they both laughed.
When they quieted down, though, Felline tensed, swiveling her ears.
"Someone's coming!" she hissed.
Ben-Gali straightened. He didn't ask her to clarify. He didn't ask for proof. He dropped out of the tree and landed on all fours, silent in the dirt around the roots, staring hard into the firefly-speckled darkness.
Felline was sure he could hear it, too, in spite of his smaller ears. A crashing through the grass. A wheeze, a tremendous sniff, and a cough.
And then a voice, raspy like a lizard's. "Ben! I know you're there."
Ben-Gali made a face, looking like he was suppressing a groan with his entire being. He stood and glanced up at Felline. He pressed a finger to his lips. When she nodded, he said, "Yeah, I'm here, old man. What are you doing out this late?"
"I'm not here for you, Ben."
Ben-Gali pffed dismissively. "Of course you are. I'm awesome."
The hooded figure from that afternoon stepped into the moonlight encircling the tree. He lifted his pale hands, grasped the hood, and folded it back.
A shock went through Felline, tingling in her palms and the soles of her feet. He wasn't a lizard – he was a cat! Another survivor!
But how? Why? What was it about this peaceful little town in the middle of nowhere that had funneled them here, now, seeking the one thing that could save them all?
The cat lifted his head, his nostrils flaring and white mustache fluttering as he noisily inhaled. The bridge of his nose was both wide and angled sharply, as though it had been broken at least once. The tails of a sweat-stained bandanna lifted in the light breeze that ruffled his white mane. His tufted ears, though positioned lower and on the sides of his head, were larger and more feline than not. Two gray eyes stared upward, filmed over like Panthro's bad eye. They drifted, sightless.
The ruddy-bearded cat nodded toward the tree. "I can smell you there, young one. I want you to take me to your king."
A/N: It occurred to me that this chapter felt like it was dragging - because it was! It's pretty long, word-wise. I think this is a good place to stop it and move on to the next chapter . . . which brings the total planned chapter count up to 12. I think. Still have a way to go!
Oh, and just FYI, I changed the Brightheart scene last chapter very subtly - to make it better, of course! Go check it out if you're curious. :3
Reviewer Thanks! allurascastle (twice!), KelseyAlicia, Atea1793, St4r Hunter, The Night Whisperer, Darwin, AndrianaWarrior7, Heart of the Demons, Seeds of Destruction, Blacktiger93, and FallingStar5027. I love you guys so much! Bear with me, okay? Writing this is kinda rocky for me right now (like, I don't know if I want to make the next chapter a "Part II" or give it its own focus, and other concerns). But I'll figure it out, especially with all of you cheering me on! THANK YOU!
Forever Yours,
Anne
